I'd personally say, being in the military (hey cadets counts lol), that the Challenger 2 tank is (in my opinion) the best all round tank. Had a climb around a few of them and other tanks at REME (Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers, bascially the army's engineers) and can confim, they are a pretty mean piece of machine, wouldn't like to see one of those coming for me..

Quoting Helvknight (Reply 8):Or, to put it another way, how long have I left to live?

IMO, for whatever it's worth, I think the Challenger 2, Abrams and Leo are all on par wioth being the top of the line tanks in the world.

When you discuss "what is the best all around tank", you have to take everything about the tank into account. Firepower, Crew Survivability, Fire Control, Automotive Performance, etc.

For my $$$, it's the Abrams.

I am of course partial to my Abrams . . . but I know first hand the capabilites of that machine. I know none of the Soviet era/Russian built armor we challenged in the desert stood a chance in hell against the Abrams. I watched a couple of turrets fly off those things. I've been inside a T72, T64, and a T55. All equally worthless.

The T-72 is common around the world in the armies of many potential enemies of the U.S. and other Western nations. Many Western analysts regard this as worrisome because, at least theoretically, its 125 mm 2A46 main gun is capable of destroying any modern main battle tank in the world today, including the M1 Abrams. On the other hand, on those three occasions when Soviet clients using T-72s have met Western armies that possessed modern main battle tanks —Lebanon in 1982 (against the Israeli Merkava), Iraq in 1991 (against the U.S. M1 Abrams and the British Challenger 1), and again Iraq in 2003— the T-72 did not show its abilities. After clashes in Lebanon in 1982, both the Israelis and the Syrians claimed their main tank's superiority, but there is no verifiable evidence of a T-72 meeting Merkava in battle. In the Persian Gulf War, the Iraqi tank units were heavily defeated, although this might have more to do with the poor training and full air supremacy than with any deficiencies of the T-72 itself. Furthermore, while facing the most modern Western tanks, the versions the Iraqi army fielded were out of date at the time. The Iraqi T-72s were downgraded export versions that had not been significantly upgraded over time and were firing inferior ammunition (often with steel penetrators and half-charges of propellant).